


Operation Infatuation

by Meatball42



Series: Rare Pairs [69]
Category: Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Marvel (Comics), Marvel 3490, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Awkward Boners, F/M, Mutual Pining, Secret Crush, Team Bonding, Teasing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-05
Updated: 2019-01-05
Packaged: 2019-09-27 14:10:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17163413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meatball42/pseuds/Meatball42
Summary: As the Avengersgossipbond as a team, Natasha Stark is forced to admit that she used to have a crush on Captain America as a teenager. Suddenly, it’s all a pining Steve can think about.





	Operation Infatuation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cap Iron Man Community](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Cap+Iron+Man+Community).



> Community prompt #125 was for Earth 3490, but we have very little information on that world, so I imported the setting and some characters from Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes. However, you do not need to have seen that cartoon to understand this story; just assume a vaguely Avengers-Mansion-era comics setting.

“I think my big crush during my boyhood years was Amelia Earhart,” Steve said thoughtfully. He had already folded for the round, so he could hold his bottle of beer in one hand and stroke his chin with the other. “She always looked like she could handle a tussle. Not to mention, she was a pioneer, a pilot, and cleaned up pretty nice, too.”

“The question wasn’t about your role models, Cap, we wanna know who got you going,” Clint corrected. “Come up, who made little Stevie stand up to attention?”

Steve slowly turned to look at Clint, who withered under the even stare.

“I mean… sure, Amelia Earhart, an American hero.” He stared down intently at his cards.

“My first crush was an actor: Aleksey Alekseev,” Natasha announced. Her tongue lilted over the Russian name and Clint blinked a few times, looking up at her. She smiled dangerously. “Do you fold, Hawkeye?”

“Uh, no.” Clint threw a few chips into the pot and Steve snickered, winking at the spy across the table. She tossed her bright red hair over her shoulder, an enigmatic smile on her lips. 

“Ooh, if we’re doing movie actors, Billy Dee Williams,” Jan interjected from the armchair on the far side of the fireplace, where she had a pattern for a new suit laid out. She shivered happily just as Tasha came back into the room from the kitchen, still wearing one of her repulsor gauntlets, and carrying a huge tub of wings. Thor was right behind her with a veggie platter.

“Wasn’t he a bit old for you, sugar baby?” Tasha teased. She sat down and started to arrange the food so it wouldn’t block the game. “Though I remember your first boyfriend was… mature.”

Jan sniffed disdainfully. “Men take a while to get there.” She stuck her tongue out at her old friend, who burst out laughing.

“Not in my experience!” Tasha slapped the coffee table, upsetting Clint’s pile of chips.

The archer glared while he resettled his winnings. “Well, there’s no need to ask who your big crush was,” he muttered.

Thor had reclined on the couch in front of the fire with a flask of mead, but he squinted at Clint curiously. “The Woman of Iron crushes all comers.”

The whole team burst into snorts, cackles, and hoots at that. When Natasha, artfully inspecting her nails, commented, “I thought that was my job,” Jan crinkled her pattern from doubling over on it. Steve, eyes squeezed shut and cheeks red, knocked over his beer with an elbow.

When the fuss had died down and Steve returned from throwing away his paper towels, Jan cleared her throat. “I don’t think we need to ask Tasha, but we never heard from Thor. Who was your big crush growing up, big guy?”

“A crush is someone you have romantic feelings for, generally in the realm of infatuation,” Natasha explained, preempting the question on Thor’s lips.

“Ah, I see.” Thor considered for a long moment. “I suppose I spent the most time mired in longing for Freydis, the wife of the one of the palace guards. She was a powerful fighter, and instructed the ladies of the palace in self-defence. She was the first woman warrior I saw, for all that she never fought in a true battle.”

“There’s more than one kind of battle,” Tasha muttered.

“I had to put up with the—hazing,” Steve said, only sounding slightly uncertain with the new terminology. “So it’s your turn, Tasha, who was your big crush?”

Tasha popped open a panel on her gauntlet and immediately started fiddling with something inside. “Eh, no one in particular.”

There was an awkward pause. Steve looked around in confusion.

“Come on, Tasha, surely there was someone who caught your eye. An actor, an athlete, maybe?”

“If I want someone, I get ‘em, Cap, no need for pining.”

Steve narrowed his eyes, sure something was being kept back. Clint casually drew a finger across his throat in Steve’s peripheral vision, but Tasha’s cheeks were glowing, and she already had so much good teasing material on Steve from her old man.

“Is that right,” he said slowly. “So if I were to go ask Jarvis—”

“Okay, you got me!” Tasha threw up her arms dramatically. “I had a Captain America phase, so what, all of us did, right guys?”

“Sure,” Jan squeaked after a moment of dead silence. “Yeah, I… I mean, for me it was more Peggy Carter, but… yeah, sure! We all...”

Clint sat up straight, almost as though someone had kicked him under the card table. “Uhm- I… I mean, I don’t like guys, but I definitely knew people who… had crushes on people in comics who everyone thought had died decades ago.”

Tasha glared at him briefly, then smiled brightly. “Well that was a fun game, how about this one, last one to the bottom gets to cover the radar during my next party.”

“The bottom of-” Steve started to query, but there was a stampede as the rest of the team rushed the cooler and started chugging beer. 

In the ensuing argument, the previous topic of conversation was quickly forgotten.

 

Of course, Steve had a steel trap memory. And there was little he’d rather remember than the fetching blush on Tasha’s cheeks as she admitted to having a crush on him when she was younger.

It did sure, uh, come up at awkward times, though. Like during Tasha’s next party, when she made a big entrance in a tiny red dress with criss-crosses of fabric that showed, really rather a lot of skin, and Steve accidently imagined unwrapping her like a present, and had to make a beeline for the bathroom. Or when she showed up to the Avengers Halloween bash dressed like that comic heroine, Wonder Woman—with  _ stars _ on her… well it sure wasn’t a skirt—and seeing her in his colors made him want to steal her away from everyone else in the room.

Or, when she laughed at one of his jokes—or, more likely, at  _ him _ —and she flushed again. Or when she was stuck in part of the Iron Woman suit for a few hours due to some damage from a small missile and Steve eventually had to help pry the hips away from her while she lay on the ground and arched her back…

Jan came up to him after that one, while he was sitting on the roof of the Mansion with his feet in the comfortingly cold water of the swimming pool. She sat down beside him and leaned against his shoulder, gazing out over the summer sunset.

“You know, I think if you asked her out, she’d say yes.”

“I can’t ask her out, Jan.”

“Well why not?!” asked Jan reasonably. “This isn’t an image thing, is it?”

“No, of course not. Well… it isn’t for me,” Steve floundered. “But she’s Natasha Stark, she could have anyone. Why would she let me take her out? I’ve got no fortune, no houses in the Caribbean or the Mediterranean. I have decades of overblown press, and comics, and… oversized muscles—”

“Don’t think Tasha would be complaining about that,” Jan said in an undertone, before sighing. “Honestly Steve, Tasha doesn’t care about any of that. In fact, if you said all that to her, I know exactly what she’d tell you. She’d say that she’s got enough money and houses for a dozen people, and that she likes you for you. You don’t like her because of how much money she has, do you?”

“No, but…” Shaking his head, Steve swirled his numb feet around in the water. “What exactly would I be bringing to the table?”

“Oversized muscles.”

Jan and Steve both spun around to see Tasha in her typical dressed-down business wear of a blazer over a band t-shirt and thick-soled workboots. The CEO had her arms crossed and was pointedly staring away from them over Manhattan.

“Star-spangled moralizing,” she continued. “Enough stubbornness to power the little engine that could up the mountain. A knack for sanctimonious yet inspiring speeches. A punch that’ll clean the clock of any supervillain this side of the International Date Line. A surprisingly steady hand in the shop. A willingness to let me lead when we dance, which, you’d be surprised how many guys can’t handle that. And, if I’m being shallow… you have a nice smile.”

Tasha was red enough to match her suit when she finally looked at Steve and took a deep breath. “So. Dinner. Tonight. Eight. Wear something blue. It matches your eyes. I’ll drive. Yes?”

Steve blinked several times in succession, his jaw hanging open. Jan nudged him, hard, with a sharp little elbow. “I- Yes! Uh—” He shooks his head to clear it. “Should I dress up?”

“Jan will help you.  _ Won’t you, Jan? _ ” Tasha said, her eyebrows coming down into a V to fix her best friend with an armor-piercing glare.

Jan nodded, fluttering her lashes innocently.

“Well. Good.” Tasha nodded sharply, then spun on her heel and near dashed back into the mansion.

“Did- how- did you set this up?” Steve asked, aghast, as Jan broke down into giggles.

“I may have sent out a teensy little emergency signal on the Avengers line,” Jan admitted when she caught her breath. “But in my defence, this was getting to be a mutual pining of national proportions!”

“That’s an inappropriate use of Avengers technology,” Steve chastised, but the effect was ruined as he checked his watch and got flustered. “It’s nearly seven o’clock, will we have enough time?”

He looked at Jan with an adorably nervous expression, and she just had to reach up and pat his cheek. “Steve, if this date does not work out, Natasha and I have agreed to arrange a romantic three-course meal in Tasha’s bedroom and then lock the two of you in there until we hear sounds coming out that are entirely inappropriate to the Avengers headquarters. And that’s a promise!”

Steve grumbled, but got to his feet and helped Jan to hers, just in time for Thor to fly over the ledge of the mansion, hammer humming through the air.

“I heed the call!” the god boomed. “Lady Janet, have you secured the hearts of our teammates?”

Jan nodded enthusiastically and slapped her tiny hand to Thor’s outstretched palm. “Operation Infatuation has reached termination!”

Steve buried his face in has hands, but he was mostly trying to cover up a massive smile.


End file.
